Tuesday twitterings

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Whinging Londoners

Man U fans are at it again. Whinge, whinge, whinge. On and on about it being such a long way from Manchester to Cardiff for the semis. What do they care? They all live in flipping Hampshire – it’s right along the M4.

Fan stereotypes aside, I utterly agree with them and not just over the travelling distance. After all, we’ve got it worse than any other team. Within England, there isn’t region further from Cardiff than ourselves. Note that I said region, not team – Blyth Spartans are one English team I can mention who’d have even further to trail. And Bedlington Terriers. But I digress.

The Millenium Stadium is a fantastic place. I’ve never been in, but I’ve been around it. It looks great. I’d love to go. But venues like that are for finals. I had the same argument against the old Wembley being overused for the semis in its last year before closure. That and the fact that we had to trail all the way down the A1 while Chelsea just had to roll out of bed and into the ground.

A group of Man U fans have elected to protest the venue selection and boycott the game. I admire their stance, but they have to admit that it’s doomed to failure. If they don’t take the tickets, then someone else will. There’s no way their fans, or ours, wouldn’t snap up every available ticket regardless of how inconvenient it is to get there and back. As it stands, we have Norwich away on the Tuesday so I’m toying with taking a couple of days off work and doing both, if I get tickets.

I think Arsenal are the ones with most to gain from the choice of venue, though. They’re liable to fill their half of the stadium whereas Blackburn – on recent FA Cup ticket takeup – will likely barely half-fill theirs. The 12th man will be with Wenger as a result.

Unfair council tax

I got my updated council tax bill in this week and overall, it’s risen by a shade under 5%. I know this is fairly low compared to some areas (Sharon’s went up an unbelievable 16% 2 years ago), but still I wonder what I’m getting for my money.

OK, we now have a paper recycling scheme and a can/glass bin as part of our refuse collection service, but we still have the same whinging gits who won’t take your bin if it’s “too heavy” so the service itself hasn’t really improved.

My main gripe is that some of my cash is going to the police and some to the fire service. This, to me, is like an insurance. My house hasn’t burned down at all in the past year, but do I get back the money that went to the fire brigade? No. How unfair is that? It’s almost enough to convince one to set fire to one’s own front room to at least get value for the money.

Worse still is the fact that I’m paying as much for the police as the people next door, yet they’ve had five visits from the boys in blue in the last month. Not one sexy policewoman has knocked on my door in almost five years. This is a disgrace.

The people that used to live opposite had a fair few visits as well before they moved out. I got home early from work one day and saw two of the most stunningly beautiful women I have ever laid eyes on leave that house. Both in full police uniform. I thought some lucky bugger had just had a double stripogram for his birthday until they climbed into a squad car.

I’d happily double my council tax for that kind of attention.